A year after Github Marketplace launched, it has been opened up to all developers and you can now list free apps on Marketplace for free. Free trials of apps have also been introduced, a feature that has been found to have a positive impact on revenue.

GitHub Marketplace was launched in May 2017 as a new way to promote, share, for developers to sell tools built on GitHub. The intention was to create a single destination for the GitHub community to discover the apps and services they need without setting up multiple accounts or payment methods. Initially the GitHub MarketplaceAPI was restricted - there were only 14 select integrators.

A year ago there were fewer than 20 apps in GitHub Marketplace, however inclusions such as Travis CI, codeacy, Sentry and Zube formed an elite nucleus to get it going. Having started with just five categories, Code quality, Code review, Continuous integration, Monitoring and Project management, there are now thirteen, the additions being Dependency management, Deployment, Localization, Mobile, Publishing, Security, Support and Testing and now offers almost 50 tools and serves over 100,000 users.

Now the GitHub MarketplaceAPI is out of preview and using it is a matter of agreeing to the GitHub Marketplace Developer Agreement and going through the improved onboarding process which has reduced the time for getting a product listed from 2 months to under 2 weeks.

Free apps are now welcomed as a way to:

make GitHub even more flexible and provide developers with more ways to build on their workflows.

Free trials are also encouraged by GitHub who explains that they let developers try your app free for 14 days to make sure they’re choosing the right tool for their team.

Over half of the listings in Marketplace support free trials–and we found that supporting a free trial can increase your revenue by 43 percent. In addition, apps that offer free trials now account for more than 60 percent of our revenue on Marketplace.

If you are tempted to list products on GitHub Marketplace you probably want to know what cut of the revenue you stand to receive. The answer, found in the the small print of the developer agreement seems to be 75%:

GitHub will remit 75% of the sale price in USD without reduction for Taxes except for any withholding taxes that are required under applicable law. The remaining 25% of the sales price will be allotted to and retained by GitHub. At the end of each month and upon reaching a minimum value of $500 USD, GitHub will remit your share of payments.